Vilnius. From series "Photographs"

This photographic collage from 1982, entitled Vilnius, is unique because the image, due to the different imprint of the film (negative), has been divided into three fragments.

According to photographic researcher Agnė Narušytė, when looking at the artist's photographs one is haunted by the thought that something is somehow being hidden from the viewer. From where does this impression arise? The photograph is entitled Vilnius,but Balčytis documents only fragments of the city's rooftops, so that we are unable to identify the specific location of the photograph. The fragmented composition, revealing only a part of a whole, and the author's characteristic thick chiaroscuro ("light-dark") style intrigues us, creating a mystical and mysterious mood.

Born in 1955, Vytautas Balčytis belongs to the so-called middle generation of photographers, which also included, among others, Alfonsas Budvytis, Remigijus Treigys, Gintaras Pačėsa, and Alvydas Lukys, who contributed to the formation of contemporary conceptual Lithuanian photography. The photography of his generation is ascribed to the so-called "boredom aesthetics," which emerged as a rebuttal to the optimistic worldview cultivated in the 1960s by the humanistic "Lithuanian Photography School" movement.